The military escalation being launched by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation powers and Russian Federation in Syria, in the aftermath of Friday’s mass terror attacks by the Islamic State (IS) in Paris, is both bloody and reckless.
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This comes after four days of Russian air strikes on ISIS – involving 522 sorties, more than 100 cruise missiles and 1,400 tons of bombs.
Russian warplanes have been conducting airstrikes on terrorist targets in Syria at the request of President Bashar Assad since September 30.
Footage has been released of a barrage of cruise missiles being unleashed by Russian Federation against Islamic State targets in Syria.
“If [the French and the Russians] are going to cooperate together, they’ll presumably have to coordinate their targeting”, Parsons says.
Flights operating out of Beirut airport will continue unaffected despite a notice of planned Russian naval drills in the Mediterranean, airport official Ibrahim Abu Alioun said Friday. The Islamic State group has positions in Aleppo province; Idlib has the presence of the Nusra militant group.
Moscow has been pushing for the creation of a broad coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group, which would include Russian Federation, the West and a few Middle Eastern states.
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon confirmed that one of the Royal Navy’s most advanced warships, the HMS Defender, will provide air defence cover for the Charles de Gaulle as it deploys to the Gulf.
He also said that due to the Russian aerial attacks, the number of militants entering Syria in order to join or train with ISIS – terrorists who could return to Europe and other areas to carry out attacks similar to those that struck Paris last week – has been reduced.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Assad’s role will be determined in the upcoming talks, but reiterated that the Syrian president must leave as a precondition for any credible peace process.
One Russian official said there was consensus at last weekend’s G20 summit in Turkey on the need to target Islamic State, though no breakthrough with the USA yet. “Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued”, he said.
IS said its jihadists based in Sinai brought down a Russian Metrojet airliner in Egypt last month. They cited furious exchanges between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, and said cooperation between those two rivals appeared all but impossible.
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“You keep on hearing people including the president saying, ‘This is going to take a long time.’ It’s only going to take a long time if you want it to take a long time”.
